The wind industry would have every reason to be in the doldrums (that’s an actual nautical term for the belt around the Earth near the equator prone to windlessness, for you landlubbers.)  

After all, the inauguration of re-President Trump had some pretty instantaneous effects for renewable energy, and wind energy in particular. The president’s promise to “drill, baby, drill” came with a simultaneous gutting of support for the renewables industry. 

Yet, while wind giants’ share prices initially suffered, several wind energy execs told CNBC they’re unruffled, and with the US threatening tariffs if Europe doesn’t buy more of its oil and gas, EU countries may find themselves even more in the market for independent renewable energy generation.

Tilting at Windmills

Although Trump wasted no time announcing an “energy emergency” in the US as he took office, he’s adamant that wind and solar be left out of the picture. In a news conference earlier this month, Trump said: “We are going to have a policy where no windmills are being built,” and compared wind farms to “garbage in a field.” Investors told the Financial Times that the clutch of executive orders Trump signed as he re-entered the White House endangered over $300 billion of federal energy infrastructure funding. 

The impact on some major wind energy stocks was immediate. Ørsted, the world’s biggest wind energy company, saw its shares fall over 16% on Tuesday morning. At the end of last year, the wind energy industry was just starting to show signs of emerging from a serious financial crisis. But despite Trump’s bearishness, wind executives seemed to retain a sunny disposition:

• Joe Kaeser, chairman of the supervisory board of Siemens Energy, told CNBC that he actually sees some benefits for the German multinational tucked away in Trump’s executive orders. “I believe the electrification age has just begun. Whether that’s gas turbines or wind or solar or something else, we’ve got everything, and the customers decide in the end,” Kaeser said.
• Ignacio Galán, executive chairman of Spanish renewables company Iberdrola, was similarly upbeat speaking to CNBC. “We are seeing that probably we are in the best moment for electrification,” he said, pointing to flourishing electricity demand from data centers. 

While Trump is not a fan of wind farms, he happily presented a $500 billion data center infrastructure investment plan on Tuesday. Dubbed “Stargate,” the investment is being helmed by OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle. That bubbly announcement was swiftly undermined by newly minted federal official Elon Musk, who tweeted “They don’t actually have the money,” but bear in mind that Musk is in a bitter rivalry with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

Don’t Look Up: While the US may provide less incentives for climate-focused companies for the next four years, that doesn’t mean US companies have nowhere else to go. On Wednesday, Regeneration.VC, a VC firm partially backed by actor Leonardo DiCaprio, announced it’s looking to expand its presence in Europe. “The concept of sustainable and impact investment will have better tailwinds in Europe for the next few years,” Regeneration.VC partner Jamie Rowles told Business Insider. If only those tailwinds could power some turbines… though in a sense, they kind of do.

It’s an encapsulating moment, to be sure: JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, speaking on Wednesday at Davos, birthplace of Davosman, telling the tariff-loathing globalists in attendance to “get over it.” 

The leader of America’s largest bank also cautioned bullish optimists that US stock markets are overvalued and said there’s no guarantee inflation will go anywhere. We hope we can get over that. 

Dishing from Davos

Dimon’s credibility with markets is rooted in his actions in advance of the 2008 recession: He noticed that underwriting standards on Wall Street were declining and instructed his firm to trim its exposure to subprime mortgages beginning in late 2006. That helped JPMorgan avoid the worst of the crisis.

And he was especially chatty Wednesday because, like many other global leaders in finance, politics, and academia, he’s in Davos, Switzerland, for the annual gathering of the World Economic Forum. It’s there that he told CNBC of his straightforward thinking on a host of economic issues that have been shrouded in uncertainty:

• Dimon’s tariff proclamation — that business leaders should “get over it” — was especially notable, as economists have debated how much levies on foreign goods could impact the supply chain and consumer costs. “I would put it in perspective: If it’s a little inflationary, but it’s good for national security, so be it,” he said of President Donald Trump’s pledge to slap taxes of 10% on Chinese imports and 25% on Canadian and Mexican imports as of February 1.
• His pointed remark that markets are “kind of elevated” — the S&P 500, with back-to-back gains over 20%, just had its best two years since the late 1990s — echoes Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon, who has expressed similar concern, which means some investors might be wise to temper their expectations. “You need fairly good outcomes to justify those prices,” Dimon said, noting asset prices are in the top 10% to 15% of historical ranges.

Dimon noted one more major issue, which he said could prolong inflation: “What I’m a little cautious about is the deficit spending; it’s a global issue, not just an American issue.” According to the IMF, global public debt was hovering around $100 trillion, or about 93% of global GDP, at the end of 2024 and will be near 100% of GDP by 2030.

Showing Love: In happier news, Dimon did say that he and Tesla CEO Elon Musk had resolved some of their differences. The two had feuded on and off after JPMorgan sued over claims the electric car company breached the terms of a stock warrant deal when Tesla share prices fluctuated after Musk said he was considering taking the automaker private. “Elon and I hugged it out,” he said.

On Monday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order withdrawing the United States from the World Health Organization. Completing the move will require congressional authorization and paying America’s dues to the international organization for this year.

But global health funding organizations are already looking to the private sector and the well-funded philanthropic foundations of the world’s richest to make up for a future shortfall in the UN health agency’s ability to distribute cash.

Unhealthy Choices

The US is the WHO’s biggest donor, chipping in roughly 18% of the organization’s $2 billion to $3 billion annual budget. If that funding ends, charities, non-profits, health organizations, academics, and developing countries that get funding from the WHO will almost certainly have to look to private companies and foundations to fill the gap.

Some started looking even before Trump’s decision, laying the groundwork for public sector pullbacks:

• The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria — an international financing organization that funds disease prevention programs — told Reuters on Wednesday that it will ask private entities for nearly 50% more money, or $2 billion, in a new funding round. The group, which counts Coca-Cola, Johnson & Johnson, and Microsoft among its corporate donors, raised $15.7 billion for three years in its last funding round, $1.3 billion from private donors.
• Gavi, a public-private global health partnership focused on immunization in the world’s poorest regions, said last month that it is looking to raise $9 billion, and cited concern about shortfalls in support from government and global agencies.

Open the Gates: After the United States, the WHO’s second-biggest donor is not a country but the private foundation of two of the world’s richest people: the Gates Foundation. While the foundation remains strong after its founders, Bill and Melinda Gates, ended their marriage, it is already a donor to the Global Fund and Galvi. The foundation has previously expressed concern that it’s “not right” for the multibillion-dollar organization to play such a major role in global health funding, and that countries including and beyond the US should step up.